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gunter: cancel-culture bullies should cut raygun a break
i have to admit to feeling sorry (a bit) for australian...
aug 17 2024
3 minute read
b-girl raygun of team australia
competes during the b-girls round robin - group b on day fourteen of the olympic games paris 2024 at place de la concorde on august 09, 2024 in paris, france.
ezra shaw
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getty images
i have to admit to feeling sorry (a bit) for australian olympic breaker rachel gunn (whose competition name is raygun).
raygun earned zeroes from the judges at the paris olympics and has since been the subject of horrendous cancel-culture bullying online.
yes, her routine at times resembled a seizure more than a legitimate breakdancing performance.
but it was more polished than anything 99% of us could have achieved.
ninety-nine point nine, nine per cent.
if i’d tried any of her moves, the only sounds that would have been heard would be my spine snapping, followed by agonizing screams and sirens. the ride to hospital would have led to weeks in traction and a body cast.
gunn’s moves mimicking a kangaroo were head-scratching, if not downright goofy. but she qualified legitimately and took it seriously.
is it her fault there is very little competitive breaking in australasia; so you qualified mostly because there wasn’t much competition?
the cbc’s breaking analyst, adrian bernard, aka “switch b,” explained that australia doesn’t have an extensive “b culture,” but raygun was fully legit.
the only reservation on my sympathy is that gunn, in her real life, is a professor of cultural studies with a specialty in breaking culture. surely, if she was being honest with herself, she had to know her skills were not up to olympic standards and she was opening herself up to mockery. (she has, though, finished on the podium at several australian national and oceania competitions.)
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when watching raygun’s first-round routines, my wife and i wondered whether she was a protester or prankster, something like the breaking equivalent of a streaker.
but she wasn’t a fraud. she wasn’t being disrespectful to the sport of breaking or making fun of it.
had she been guilty of any of those, she would deserve some of the worldwide condemnation she is receiving. however, no one, except serial killers and child molesters, deserves the abusive personal attacks to which gunn has been subjected.
i would equate her to eddie “the eagle” edwards, the british ski-jumper who was the darling of the 1988 winter olympics in calgary. he only qualified because there were no other jumpers in great britain at the time. yet, no one accused the british olympic committee of perpetrating a hoax.
like edwards, gunn came dead last. it was unfair that the judges awarded her no points at all — zeroes across the board. gunn attempted an innovative (if somewhat strange) routine, which is supposed to be one of the scoring elements
still, it takes a lot of guts to put oneself out there on the world stage, competing in a lifelong passion, particularly if you’re unlikely to succeed.
the men’s breaking final between phil kim (wizard) of canada and danis civil (dany dann) of france blew me away. it was every bit as athletic as anything i saw in the floor routines in gymnastics.
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if ever you pooh-poohed the inclusion of breaking as an olympic sport, the gold medal dance-off between wizard and dany dann should have convinced you otherwise.
how both of them (and most of the other competitors) could flip themselves up on their heads, hold themselves upside down in all sorts of twists and contortions, then process fluidly and gracefully into new moves is almost incomprehensible.
when snowboarding and skateboarding were first added to the olympics, they were dismissed by a lot of purists as not being real sports. it is hard to find anyone who claims that now, although the olympics have wrung all of the excitement out of skateboarding and could learn from the x games.
breaking won’t be in the 2028 games in los angeles, which is a shame, but leave raygun alone.
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